iTunes Pricing Standardized in E.U.

Apple has been on the hotseat in Europe because of different pricing between the U.K. store and the rest of Europe. Today, it announced changes, but it also gave U.K. music labels a warning.

Apple today announced that within six months it will lower the prices it charges for music on its UK iTunes Store to match the already standardized pricing on iTunes across Europe in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and Spain. Apple currently must pay some record labels more to distribute their music in the UK than it pays them to distribute the same music elsewhere in Europe. Apple will reconsider its continuing relationship in the UK with any record label that does not lower its wholesale prices in the UK to the pan-European level within six months.

From that slightly veiled warning we should check in six months to see who, if anyone, is missing from iTunes.